Chapter Sixty
Declan
The world narrows the second my skates hit the ice.
It’s still the only place that makes sense—where my body moves on memory and my head finally shuts off. Everything outside the rink fades. The frustration, the noise, the constant pressure of Cooper invading my life like he’s got the right to be there again.
I push hard, harder than I should, burning my lungs and legs until the edge of pain settles me. My knee twinges on crossovers, the familiar warning it always gives, but it holds. It still lets me skate. I didn’t lose the ice completely. If I had, I’m not sure I would’ve recovered from that.
I need this. A quiet morning, a wide rink, and absolutely zero Cooper.
So, of course, it makes perfect fucking sense when I turn toward the side, he’s there, smirking like he’s caught me doing something embarrassing. I dig my blades in and stop short, spraying ice in an arc. My pulse jumps the way it used to, and I ignore the hell out of it.
Next to him, leaning on the boards, is Gerard, the rink owner’s grandson, face flushed with excitement.
“Found a visitor lurking outside,” he says, eyes crinkling. “Didn’t think I’d see Reign Cooper back at our rink. Your tracks are always on in the lobby now. Still hella weird hearing your voice come through our speakers, man.”
My jaw clenches so hard it aches as Cooper laughs.
“What are you doing here?”
Cooper lifts a skate, picking at the blue plastic cap along with boards, trying to look casual. He’s not fooling anyone; not me and definitely not himself. Not when I can see the stubbornness in his eyes that I’ve been trying to avoid.
“Came to skate,” he says, as if it’s obvious.
I stare at him. Unimpressed. “You don’t skate.”
His lips twitch, and he huffs out a laugh. “I did. Once. When I was younger.”
“From what I remember, it didn’t go well,” I mutter, hating how easily childhood memories pull to the surface.
His gaze lands on the small scar at my jaw, now hidden by my beard, before he shrugs. “Figured I’d give it another shot.”
A faint blush creeps over Cooper’s cheeks, and I force my expression blank.
“Anyway,” Gerard says, pushing upright. “Gonna grab a coffee. Your sister’s team’s playing this weekend if you’re still good to ref.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Clapping my shoulder, he heads off toward the lobby, leaving the two of us under the rays of the overhead lights.
Cooper perks up. “I heard you did that. The kids must love you.”
Taking off again, I put as much distance as I can between us.
I don’t get far, though, before I hear the scrape of skates behind me, unsteady, uneven, a rhythm I haven’t heard since we were kids.
I don’t have to turn around to know he’s gripping the sides of the rink like they’re the only thing keeping him upright.
“Gerard looks good,” Cooper calls out, voice bouncing off the empty seats, bar one, where his bodyguard sits in the front row. Does he watch him piss, too? “Didn’t know his dad’s trying to get him to take over.”
Slowing my pace, I exhale sharply. “What are you doing, Cooper?”
“What do you mean? I’m skating.” His eyes go wide in that fake, innocent way he thinks still works on me.
I skate toward him and stop close enough that he has to tilt his chin up, his grip on the railings tightening.
“That’s not what I mean.”
His nose is a little red from the cold, hair sticking out from under his beanie, and when he edges closer, I catch the faint trace of his deodorant, not that expensive cologne he wore his first day back, but the one he’s worn forever.
“Why are you following me?” I ask, stepping away from him. “The bar? Now here? How’d you even know where I went?”
He wrinkles his nose. “I asked Vince. He may have offered up the places you usually go in exchange for concert tickets, and since it’s a school day for Grace, I thought…”
He doesn’t finish, smiling coyly at me.
“So my employees are up for sale.”
“Looks like it.” He has the audacity to grin wider.
I close my eyes for a second, dragging a hand down my face. “Cooper, you need to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“This,” I say, gesturing between us. “Acting like we’re still the same inseparable duo… We’re not that anymore.”
His gaze meets mine before he looks away, the words coming out low, hesitant. “You used to like it when I followed you around.”
I almost laugh. Almost. But the sound dies before it can be heard.
“That was a long time ago. Before things changed.”
“They didn’t change so much that we can’t get it back, right?”
Part of me wants to say yes, wants to believe we could pick up the pieces and slot ourselves back into who we used to be. But we’re older now, different, and trusting him again isn’t simple.
“Don’t do that,” I warn.
He steps away from the boards, not far, but enough to wobble. I reach out automatically, pulling my hand back before I can steady him.
“Declan,” he says, voice rougher than before. “I heard you at The Verge. I heard every word.”
I go still. Heat flashes up the back of my neck.
Of course he heard me, stood there listening to me spill years of swallowed words, showing my weakness, exposing them.
And now he’s looking at me like he knows every unguarded piece I wish he’d never seen.
He licks his lips, nervous or determined, I can’t tell which.
“You’re right to be angry. I know I disappeared and stopped showing up.
” He scrubs a hand along the back of his neck.
“I am sorry about it. All of it. I didn’t really get how much I hurt you until I saw you again.
I fucked up. I’m not—” He shakes his head.
“I’m not pretending I didn’t. I just… I don’t want to be that guy anymore. ”
There’s a tremor in his voice, a crack in the confidence he always wears like armor.
“Cooper—”
“I’m trying,” he says quickly, his blue eyes more silver today in the light. “If you want me to back off, I will. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t miss you. Because I do.”
He slides closer, skates unsteady under him, but he doesn’t break eye contact.
“I’m still me,” he whispers. “Still your Cooper. The one you couldn’t stay mad at for long.”
He says it like it’s a truth carved into both of us. My whole body reacts before my mind catches up, a low tug in my gut, a pull I’ve been ignoring since the day he wandered back into the bar and looked at me like he was lost and in need of saving.
But I can’t be his life raft anymore.
“Don’t,” I say, the word coming out thin.
“You’ve been angry for so long,” he murmurs. “You don’t remember what it was like before.”
“You think this is just anger?”
His eyes flicker. “Isn’t it?”
I shake my head, feeling the weight of everything pile back onto my shoulders. The years of silence, the years of what-ifs, years of loving someone who wasn’t there. So much wasted time holding on to something that was never going to be.
“If this was just anger, I’d be fine. I’d yell at you, then get over it. Hell, I would’ve moved on by now.”
He blinks, hand lifting like he wants to reach out and touch me, but doesn’t. “I don’t understand. Then what is it?”
I was in love with you—all encompassing, head-first, no-breaks kind of love—and you took that part of me and walked away like it was nothing. You didn’t even know you had it. And maybe if I told you, things would have been different. But they aren’t.
The truth rises to the back of my throat, clawing with a desperate need to come out. But I can’t give it to him. Not when he never knew in the first place.
Dragging a hand through my hair, I force air into my lungs. “It’s too complicated now, Cooper.”
“Then uncomplicate it,” he says, stepping closer still, steadying himself with a hand on my arm this time. “Help me understand.”
My gaze drops to where he holds me. Even after all these years, the contact hits like a Mack truck on fire.
Heat shoots up my nerves, a reminder of every na?ve piece of me that used to lean into his touch instead of away from it.
I freeze for one split second, breath stalling, that gravitational pull telling me to go to him, let him in.
Shrugging him off, I shake my head. “You’re here now, but soon, you’ll be gone again. Back to the people who need Reign.”
“That won’t happen,” he says, nostrils flaring, jaw tensing with resolution.
“Won’t it?”
His mouth opens, then closes, gaze flicking to the ice, but it lifts fast, shoulders tightening like he’s bracing himself for a fight he doesn’t know how to win. Still, there’s no answer. And that tells me everything.
“Go home, Cooper.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says stubbornly as I’m about to skate off.
I look at him, really look at him, the tired eyes, the defiant tilt of his chin, the terrified determination.
“I don’t want you to hate me anymore,” he whispers.
The floor drops out from under me. Hate him? Jesus. After everything. After the years I spent missing him like a fucking limb. After the way I continued loving him so completely that I never recovered from it. I could never fucking hate him.
My throat burns, and I have to swallow twice before I can speak. “You really think that?”
He hesitates, unadulterated sadness shining in his eyes. “Don’t you?”
I release a slow breath. “If I hated you, this would be so much easier.”